PKD scholars tend to divide the author’s career into three eras: the 50s pulp with flashes of literary merit, the golden era of the 60s and early 70s with many of his masterpieces, among them Ubik and Flow My Tears, and then the late 70s and early 80s with the fascinating spritual journey that yielded, among other things, the VALIS trilogy. Published in 1964, one might view The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch as a prelude of things to come, a blend of science-fiction and faith that maintains a relatively grounded story. Through the three eras, we can trace an analog to Philip K. Dick’s life, one that began in the dregs of pulp science-fiction with mainstream aspirations, and was bombarded with drugs and bizarre religious experiences into the oblivion of quiet tragedy, ending on March 2, 1982. As Philip K. Dick was buried next to his long dead twin sister — the original dark-haired girl — the mainstream was finally introduced to him through Ridley Scott’s brilliant Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? adaptation released later that year in its first of many forms.

Nowadays that mainstream often considers The Three Stigmata to be one of his best novels, along with A Scanner Darkly and The Man in the High Castle, and I must say real quick that I’m glad this is our reality, where we can evaluate his work and not be laughed at, where my mom knows who Philip K. Dick is and we’ll all be lining up to see the Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said or Disney’s King of the Elves in years to come. But anyways The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch tells the story of an Earth on the brink of destruction, where people are forced into emigration to a miserable existence on Mars, and find sole respite in Can-D, a drug that offers shared hallucinations — the ultimate escapism. Or is it? There’s talk in the wind of a competing substance known as Chew-Z, as manufactured by the enigmatic Palmer Eldritch. God promises eternal life, Chew-Z can deliver it, as they say. Corporate bigwig Leo Bulero and his top psi consultant Barney Mayerson investigate and soon find themselves in a plot to assassinate Eldritch, who may or may not be human. Or God. They travel across space, time, and everything, often propelled along by the fierce women in their lives.

What starts as a pretty typical Philip K. Dick novel, one that could conceivably share the world of Ubik or Flow My Tears, with its flying cars and vidphones and corporations, mutates into a spiritual meditation on the big questions. Science-fiction is being used here as means to reach these areas of exploration, which is why it’s important to remember that Philip K. Dick was definitively an author of science-fiction. Like Kurt Vonnegut. I’m not just saying this because I’d like to use this useless blog in defense of the genre, and don’t want to lose one of its key players, but because with The Three Stigmata we witness the growth of an artist. Dick always wrote about ideas close to his heart through fantastical worlds and scenarios, but in his discussions of faith and God strike a profound chord.

We know they’re coming from a very genuine place, as Philip K. Dick would not only become obsessed with the religious half of these books, but always stuck by the science-fiction half. He always hoped to be accepted by a popular audience, but knew that the perception of his genre was that of the literary ghetto. 40 novels, 50 short stories, only a handful non-science-fiction — that’s dedication.

There’s not much I can say about this book, and not much I can say to remember the author that hasn’t already been said. For a better resource, be sure to check out the review catalogue on the Genrebusters website, which has many of his works, and if for all diehards, make sure to pick up the recently released Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. It’s an involved, thoughtful tale of endless unpredictability and spots of humor that punctuate a terrifying, absurdist reality.

For a two hour interview with the author I just found on YouTube but haven’t yet listened to, click here

4 comments

Some of Dick’s novels I don’t really understand the affinity for, like Flow My Tears and Martian Time-Slip. Not that they’re bad, but why anyone would put them alongside High Castle, Three Stigmata, Electric Sheep, Ubik, and A Scanner Darkly is beyond me. If I had been in charge of the Library of America editions, I would have instead included Time Out of Joint and some short stories, like “Second Variety,” “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” “The Electric Ant,” “Faith of Our Fathers,” and “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon.”

And VALIS is a total mystery to me. Some people read it and see brilliance, and some read it and see 200 rambling pages from a man having a religious crisis. I find myself in the latter group. I picked up a copy of the Exegesis in a bookstore recently, and laughed at the mere thought of reading all that tripe.

Apparently someone recently got ahold of the rights to Flow My Tears and wanted to make a movie of it with Tom Cruise. Normally I would object to that casting, but it’s kind of perfect for that story. As underwhelmed as I was by the book, I can see it making quite a good movie.

Three Stigmata? Yeah. I wouldn’t recommend it to a newcomer, but anyone who’s already digested Electric Sheep or Ubik should move on to it.

I don’t know, I enjoyed Flow My Tears and actually think the same way you do, but of Man in the High Castle. Both are good, but I was mostly unentertained throughout High Castle. And I believe it was the Halcyon (Halycon?) Company that acquired the rights to the adaptation, notbale to me for Terminator 4. I’m sure it’ll be fine, and it’s good that Hollywood tries new Dick material, because there’s more out there than just Total Recall. Seriously

High Castle just barely qualifies as “great” for me. I spent chapter after chapter wondering when it was going to stop being merely decent and start being the masterpiece that everyone had told me about, and it didn’t happen until the end: when Tagomi has his encounter in the park with the alternate world, and Juliana meets the author of the banned novel and he tells her what’s really going on. Amazing how two little chapters can make or break a novel for me. They made it all worth it. It’s probably my least favorite of the five novels I listed, and I think that any potential film adaptation would seriously need to beef up those early chapters, but I still think of it quite fondly.

I’m actually looking forward to the Total Recall remake, for a few reasons (no Mars, I like the director, Bill Nighy and Bryan Cranston), but yes, it would be nice to see some other titles adapted. I’ll be bummed if I never see a Ubik film in my lifetime, but then again, I got Open Your Eyes, which is an excellent unofficial Ubik movie. There are plenty of good novels and short stories just crying out for a good adaptation: The Penultimate Truth, A Maze of Death, Eye in the Sky, Clans of the Alphane Moon, etc. But we’ll probably get remakes of Blade Runner and Screamers before getting any of those.

Good ol’ Phil seemed almost too preoccupied with the jewelry and fake replicas of memorobilia in High Castle; it did seem to go on for a while, at the same time coupled with intriguing but not always compelling world building. In an author’s library where so many crazy worlds are described and inhabited, an America overtaken by Nazis and Japanese was very nearly ‘tame.’

I look forward to the Total Recall remake because I also think the cast and crew shape up, and because at the end of the day, it’s one of the few major science-fiction films to come out this year. And it’s a good story, which is a rare commodity.

I believe Michel Gondry expressed interest in Ubik, and I know that Linklater had, but opted to do Scanner after some legal or rights issue. The Dick estate seems to be in a constant litigation with somebody — The Adjustment Bureau suit, over what I’m not sure, was recently dropped. Even today, Philip K. Dick still makes the news